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Trashing the Fridge

FOR the last two years, Rachel Muston, a 32-year-old information-technology worker for the Canadian government in Ottawa, has been taking steps to reduce her carbon footprint — composting, line-drying clothes, installing an efficient furnace in her three-story house downtown.

About a year ago, though, she decided to “go big” in her effort to be more environmentally responsible, she said. After mulling the idea over for several weeks, she and her husband, Scott Young, did something many would find unthinkable: they unplugged their refrigerator. For good.

“It’s been a while, and we’re pretty happy,” Ms. Muston said recently. “We’re surprised at how easy it’s been.”

As drastic as the move might seem, a small segment of the green movement has come to regard the refrigerator as an unacceptable drain on energy, and is choosing to live without it. In spite of its ubiquity — 99.5 percent of American homes have one — these advocates say the refrigerator is unnecessary, as long as one is careful about shopping choices and food storage.

Ms. Muston estimated that her own fridge, which was in the house when they bought it five years ago and most likely dates back much longer, used 1,300 kilowatt-hours per year, or produced roughly 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide — the same amount from burning 105 gallons of gasoline. And even a newer, more efficient model, which could have cut that figure in half, would have used too much energy in her view.

“It seems wasteful to me to use even an Energy Star-rated fridge,” she said, “because I’m getting along fine without one.”

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Photo Illustration by The New York Times; (Junkyard: Hans Hansen/Getty Images)

Ms. Muston now uses a small freezer in the basement in tandem with a cooler upstairs; the cooler is kept cold by two-liter soda bottles full of frozen water, which are rotated to the freezer when they melt. (The fridge, meanwhile, sits empty in the kitchen.)

She acknowledges that living this way isn’t always convenient. For starters, it has altered the couple’s eating habits.

“When we had the fridge, we were eating a lot of prepared food from the grocery store,” she said. But the cooler has limited room, and the freezer is for meat and vegetables. Without the extra storage, Ms. Muston finds herself cooking more — which requires more time and forethought because items from the freezer must be thawed.

Asked whether the couple had to give up any cherished foods, Ms. Muston sighed. “Cold beer,” she said. “Scott can’t come home and grab a cold beer out of the fridge anymore. He has to put it in the cooler and wait an hour.”

For the most part, though, the couple seems to have made a smooth transition to life without a refrigerator, something others have tried but failed to do. Beth Barnes, 29, who works for the Kentucky Bar Association, unplugged the refrigerator in her apartment in Frankfort last May to be “a little radical,” she said. After reading online comments from others without a fridge, she learned she could move condiments to a pantry, and that butter can remain unrefrigerated for a week or more. The main concern was how to store dairy products, a major part of her diet.

Ms. Barnes decided to use a cooler, which she refilled daily during the summer with ice that she brought home from an ice machine at her office. That worked fine until she began to travel out of town for her job this fall, and the system hit a snag.

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O PIONEER To reduce their carbon footprint, Rachel Muston and her husband havent used a refrigerator in a year. A small basement freezer and a cooler are all they need.Credit
Colin Rowe for The New York Times

In the end she compromised and bought a minifridge. “I could drop the refrigerator completely if I had a milkman,” she said. “I might eventually try it again if I ever figure out the milk situation.”

MANY environmentalists — even many who think nothing of using recycled toilet paper or cut the thermostat to near-arctic levels — see fridge-free living as an extreme choice or an impractical and excessive goal.

“The refrigerator was a smart advance for society,” said Gretchen Willis, 37, an environmentally conscious mother of four in Arlington, Tex., who recently read about the practice on a popular eco-themed blog, thecrunchychicken.com, and was astounded.

“I never would have thought of it,” Ms. Willis said, explaining that although she’s committed to recycling and using fluorescent bulbs, she draws the line at any environmental practice that will result in great expense or inconvenience. Living without a refrigerator, she said, qualifies on both counts: she would have to buy more food in smaller quantities because of spoilage, prepare exact amounts because she couldn’t refrigerate leftovers, and make daily trips to the grocery store.

“It’s silly not to have one,” she said, “considering what the alternative is: drinking up a gallon of milk in one day so it doesn’t spoil.”

Deanna Duke, who lives in Seattle and runs the site Ms. Willis visited, said that taking a stand for or against unplugging has become “a badge of honor” for those on either side. “It’s either ‘look how far I’m willing to go,’ or ‘look how far I’m not willing to go,’ ” she said. For her part, Ms. Duke may refrain from watering her lawn in an effort at conservation, but she’s firmly in the pro-refrigerator camp. “I can’t think of any circumstances, other than an involuntary extreme situation, that would make me unplug my fridge,” she said. “The convenience factor is too high.”

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CHILLING Some people who have tried to go without a fridge, like Rachel Muston, have succeeded. Credit
Colin Rowe for The New York Times

No-fridge advocates see things differently. They trade tips on Web sites about food storage (“In the winter I put perishables like mayonnaise outside ... ”) and cite residents of developing countries and eco-celebrities like Colin Beavan, the self-proclaimed No Impact Man who ditched his refrigerator during the year that he tried to make no net impact on the environment, as proof that people can get along fine without electric refrigeration.

“Refrigerator lust is one of the things driving huge energy-use increases in the developing world,” wrote the blogger “Greenpa” on his “Little Blog in the Big Woods” two years ago. “A great deal of what’s in your fridge absolutely does NOT need to be there.”

That post has since drawn scores of comments, many from other people living without refrigerators. One woman who followed his lead wrote to report she was “over my initial panic from reaching into the freezer to get ice cream only to feel hot air coming from the vent in the back!!!”

The idea has generated some interest in Western Europe, too. Last fall, scientists at Oxford University in England revived the “Einstein refrigerator,” a pressurized gas fridge that runs without using electricity that is co-credited to Albert Einstein. And Veneta Cucine, the Italian kitchen company, has lately unveiled a concept kitchen called the iGreen, which has no refrigerator but instead uses trays under the countertop to hold fresh produce.

PEOPLE who do best without a refrigerator often have certain built-in lifestyle advantages — they live alone and don’t have to cook large meals for a family, say, or they live on a farm or within walking distance of a grocery store. In the case of Duncan Campbell, who has been living happily without a fridge for three years, it was the food he was used to eating.

Before making the switch, Mr. Campbell, 53, already hewed to a diet focused around long-lived staples like beans and grains, and had begun to can the vegetables he grows in the garden behind his house in Columbus, Ohio. By using a small chest freezer for fruit and leftover soups, he said, he has no trouble whipping up a meal.

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Others, like Beth Barnes, have settled for a minifridge. I could drop the refrigerator completely if I had a milkman, Ms. Barnes said.Credit
Carla Winn for The New York Times

The one thing he hasn’t been able to adjust to is the reaction from friends. “Even people I meet who are energy conscious gasp when they hear I’m going without a fridge,” he said.

Ms. Duke, the eco-blogger, has noticed a similar response from her readers when she mentions the no-fridge topic on her blog. “I think a lot of people in the environmental movement have a romanticized idea about living like a pioneer,” she said. “But moving icepacks around and rotten food doesn’t have the same romantic appeal as hanging your clothes on a line.”

A bigger issue for serious environmentalists may be figuring out just how much good one is actually doing by unplugging the fridge — a common problem with green-oriented lifestyle choices.

Mr. Campbell was surprised to read online that refrigerators do not use all that much energy. Marty O’Gorman, the vice president of Frigidaire, said an 18-cubic-foot Energy Star-rated Frigidaire refrigerator uses about 380 kilowatt-hours a year — less than a standard clothes dryer — and costs a homeowner $40, or about 11 cents a day.

Pascale Maslin, the founder of Energy Efficiency Experts, a Washington-based company that conducts energy audits on homes and other buildings, said people may focus undue attention on the refrigerator’s energy consumption simply because they often hear — incorrectly, it turns out — that it is the household appliance that uses the most energy other than heating and cooling systems.

“If I was to examine my life and ask what would reduce my carbon footprint, I would say stop eating meat,” Ms. Maslin said. “That’s much more significant than unplugging your fridge.”

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Duncan Campbell now completely lives without a refrigerator.Credit
J. Kevin Fitzsimons for The New York Times

As for the strategy of switching to a dorm-style fridge, Mr. O’Gorman said downsizing from a standard model to Frigidaire’s smallest minifridge would result in only about $6 in energy savings over a year.

It’s this sort of practical calculus that has led many who advocate sustainable living to view unplugging the fridge as a dubious practice. They point out that it is likely to result in more trips to the store (which burns more gas, for those who drive) and the purchase of food in smaller portions (thus more packaging).

• Once a year, unplug the refrigerator and clean the door gaskets and compressor coils; if there are pets in the house, clean the coils every three months.

• Buy a refrigerator that has the freezer on top, a configuration that is more efficient than a side-by-side model (in part, because it is generally smaller). Also, choose an Energy Star-rated unit, which is up to 20 percent more efficient.

• Try not to open the door too often, to limit the frequency with which the compressor runs, and choose a model that comes with an alarm to warn that the door is ajar.

• Don’t place the refrigerator next to the oven or in a spot that receives direct sunlight. The higher the ambient temperature, the more the unit has to work to keep cool.